Time Turning
by crookshanks15
Summary: Crookshanks is about to be thrown into a box of jumbled jigsaw pieces of the lives of the people around him. Anything's game. The past, the present, the future. Who will he see next? There's only one way to find out...
1. Crookshanks

**Chapter One—Crookshanks**

Crookshanks wandered idly across a corridor, pausing to sniff at a beam of pure moonlight filtering through a high window. Light snores issued from several of the surrounding portraits, but the orange cat ignored them. There would be plenty of time to tease them tomorrow, when they couldn't wake the castle on him. He sauntered down another corridor, brushing a rusty suit of armor with his bottlebrush tail. He was extremely proud of this tail, much to the annoyance of most animals he met; the mice in particular seemed to loathe it.

Over four years of wandering the castle at night, he'd come to know it quite well—perhaps even as well as Fred and George had once known it. Hermione had never restricted him, and he enjoyed his free roaming. This was the castle at its most peaceful, but also at its most revealing. Countless secrets were hidden here, more than anyone (even he) could hope to uncover in a lifetime. However, it had become a hobby of his to root out and solve as many of these secrets as he could.

Some of them were small secrets, mere trifles which he perused to their ends only for the amusement of it. A sharply snide portrait of a wigged witch had once mentioned a visit Dumbledore himself had made to a room filled with chamber pots on the seventh floor, while in dire need of a bathroom. He rapidly discovered the Room of Requirement, and afterward he often paused for a snack or nap in comfort.

Other secrets the castle hid proved to be not quite so small. On the contrary, Crookshanks was rather proud of himself indeed for uncovering the entrance to the old Chamber of Secrets, which he had heard Harry, Ron, and Hermione mention many times. Although he was unable to open the Chamber, he knew where it was and was fairly certain he also knew what it had once contained. It was pervaded by a lingering stench as though the evil smell was unwilling to accept that its master would never return.

The very first secret he had come upon had happened quite by accident, but it had stirred his interest about the unrevealed whispers and buried mysteries of the castle. He had been here for only a month or two after Hermione had rescued him from the Magical Menagerie in Diagon Alley. Hermione had been in her third year then, and was so besieged by all the classes she wanted to take that she was compelled to request a Time Turner to attend all of them. This left her exhausted at the end of the day, and she always forgot to keep Crookshanks in her dormitory at night, though it stained her friendship with Ron. Crookshanks realized this, but he enjoyed the freedom of his nighttime ramblings too well to give up, and he just couldn't seem to leave that darned rat alone. There was something wrong with it, and he _knew_ it.

As he was shambling around the grounds one cloudy night and pondering why the peculiar rodent should give him such a foreboding, he haplessly stumbled into the vicinity of the vicious Womping Willow. It was none too kind to him. He scrambled about, trying desperately to escape its flailing branches. As he dodged a thick branch, he tripped over the knot which froze the violent tree. Its bending, creaking branches stopped cold in mid-strike. Crookshanks stood completely perplexed until the tree thawed and redoubled its attack. The cat received several more painful whacks before he'd worked out the knot's purpose. Once the tree was still again, his irresistible feline curiosity led him to the hole, the passage, and the dog-man.

Crookshanks came upon him first as a dog, but knew at once there was something unsettling in this one, too. He felt the same as that wretched rat. The cat was immediately wary, emitting a low hiss of warning. Stay back, he spat plainly. The dog whined and retreated fast, but quite suddenly grew up into a man. Crookshanks' fur prickled on end and he tensed, arched his back, and yowled at this unexpected changeling. The man shuddered and backed up even more. He was thin and gaunt, with rags that hung limply from his body and a pale, shadowed face. His hair was unbelievably filthy, long and matted. But it was when Crookshanks looked into his eyes that he began to feel some measure of pity for the man.

They were sunken and grey, washed out. They seemed dull and dead in his face, as though a soul no longer lived behind them, but had been sucked dry by a dementor's cruel kiss. They peered out of his head in fear at the feral cat before him.

Crookshanks slowly lowered his hackles and straightened his back, but not completely. It was the beginnings of trust between them—but trust takes time to build.

Soon however, they came to accept each other well, and the dog-man often talked to Crookshanks during the lonelier hours of the night, confident that somehow the determined cat could understand him.

In this way Crookshanks learned that the dog-man too had suspicions of Ron's pet. He knew many things that the cat didn't, but soon he had told Crookshanks everything he knew and many of the things he'd only wildly guessed at; what he knew of the rat, of Pettigrew, _and_ of Harry Potter. The cat had sensed something about Harry as well, the very first time he'd met him, like nothing he'd ever felt before. Now he knew more, but he still suspected there was something about the boy he _didn't_ know. Something that no one knew... Something impending.

Crookshanks sighed as he recalled these first memories of Sirius. They had been such companions. Crookshanks had probably saved Sirius's life in the Shrieking Shack that year when he'd made Harry hesitate. But Sirius was gone now. **Gone.** Crookshanks didn't know where, but he did know that wherever he was, he wouldn't be coming back, and he knew it made Harry unbearably sad to remember.

The solitary cat picked his way up yet another corridor. He pulled himself out of his reverie and poked his head into several deserted classrooms, scaring a couple of mice. He wasn't in the mood to chase them tonight. He wanted a mystery.

He passed the staff lounge—nothing interesting _there_. He made his way along the moonlit hall beyond. As he reached the end, an electric shiver clawed down his spine from head to tail as he once remembered doing to Ron's head. He sensed consternation, a stubborn unknown waiting to be poked and prodded. Acting on instinct, he thrust his head behind a tapestry of Merlin sneezing into a handkerchief and found a rough-hewn wooden door about four feet high. He pawed it open with ease and loped inside, letting the tapestry fall softly into place behind him.

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**A/N—First fanfic that I've ever actually posted. What do ya think?? REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW!!! Totally want constructive criticism. Next chap to come soon, but after that I'm not so sure. But I definitely WILL finish this one, so don't give up on me!!! I will NOT leave you hanging in the middle! (PS… If you want to know something about the next chap, just read the title. Sound promising?)**

**Disclaimer: I didn't write it, OK?? Haven't you heard that enough times already? (especially if you're wandering around _this_ site…)**


	2. What Happened Behind the Door

**Chapter Two—What Happened Behind the Door**

Crookshanks found himself in a low hallway lit only by the light from more windows. He padded up it, alert. It smelled of dust and age, and (curiously) also of green chestnuts. Not many people had used this passage and none of them recently. The cat crept on, silent as only cats can be.

Dust lay thick on the floor. Crookshanks glanced behind him to see a trail of his own broad footprints following him down the hall. He delicately lifted a paw and sniffed it. _Strange_, he thought to himself. _It still smells like chestnuts._ He lowered his paw again and looked up, continuing down the hall. Twenty feet or so ahead he spotted the entrance to a narrow tunnel that branched off to the left. A dark swatch of floor was swept clean of dust, as though something had been pushed across the floor here. The occasional shoe print strayed outside this stripe, and the smell of people was now noticeably recent.

Just then, Crookshanks faced the wall opposite the branching passage, and every thought flew from his mind as he beheld a magnificent cabinet of shelves. Around the outsides were intricate carvings. Scripts of all ages and dialects curled over the arched top, and polished wooden branches twined around the legs and sent roots into the floorboards. Even as the cat watched in utter amazement, another delicate wooden root wended its way down and an identical stem grew its way up until it reached the summit of the cabinet. The end filled out and burst into an exquisite cherrywood rosebud.

Crookshanks couldn't take his eyes from the bud, but as it began to open, he caught sight of what was kept in the cabinet and took a second glance.

Behind the incomprehensible doors of the cabinet lay shelves upon shelves of Time Turners.

Each one shone despite the dim lighting in the hall, each perfect glass dome reflecting a single diamond drop of brilliance. Glimmering highlights and frosty shadows played across the face of each minute hourglass, entrancing the cat until he was entirely lost within his own mind. He found himself pressing his nose to the panes of the cabinet door to see inside to the rows of solid time.

Abruptly the cat was pulled from his fascination by a sharp point of pain embedded in his tail. As he had stood watching, a wooden tendril had reached out, searching for a source. Now it took a vice hold on the cat, the thorns taking on an orange hue even as they curled around his pained tail. In a frantic move to escape the ravenous vine, Crookshanks pulled wildly and blindly away from the cabinet, its beauty forgotten.

And the roots securing the cabinet began to loosen and withdraw under the unknowing cat's pulls.

The cabinet began to lean, hanging over Crookshanks as a cliff hangs over its shadow. As it tipped, Crookshanks felt the root finally loosen, and he looked up to see the cabinet fall not only through the space between its place against the wall and where the cat stood, but also through time… to come rushing down to meet the orange cat with an earsplitting crash.

And time shattered.

At least, the rules of time shattered, along with each of the Time Turners on the shelves, splitting into infinite small shards and skittering across the breadth of the low hallway in a crescent sweep of broken glass and time.

The last sense Crookshanks lost to darkness was the smell of chestnuts.

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**A/N—Wow! So now you know where the story gets its title… but there's more to come! Short chapter, I know, but a lot happened and you need time to… _digest_ (right about now, I can just see you yelling at me and telling me to just tell you what happens next!) But you'll have to wait for Chapter 3.**

**Thank you for your reviews: keep telling me what you think!**

JayDragon: Thanks, I loved your story too. And I hope you like my _revised_ profile.

LGS: Neither have I… he's not even mentioned much. And he's a great character that you don't know much about…

Siraelle: Thank you! There's not a lot that you can say hasn't happened or been written when it comes to HP on this site. But that's one of the best challenges of writing fics.

Glimmer: I love reading well-written stories too… thanks.

**Keep reading (and reviewing)!**


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